08-2019 Science News

For many in the space industry, so-called “megaconstellations” of communications satellites are the next big thing. Such systems have the potential to provide services from tracking planes and ships to offering broadband internet access more effectively than existing satellite systems or terrestrial alternatives. They offer a feel-good story about connecting the world as well as

Researchers from the US, Europe, and around the world are coming together to discuss a mission to deflect an asteroid in space and to prove the technique to be an effective method of defence against a looming asteroid collision. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency (ESA) asteroid researchers and spacecraft

by Almut Kelber, Alexandre Roulin And Luis Martín San José García, The Conversation Credit: FJAH/Shutterstock More Ecosystems that are bathed in light during the day change profoundly at night. As the sun fades from the land, nocturnal life emerges, with the barn owl (Tyto alba) among them. Barn owls are iconic nocturnal birds of prey

Credit: Pathdoc/Shutterstock.com More When we speak, our sentences emerge as a flowing stream of sound. Unless we are really annoyed, We. Don’t. Speak. One. Word. At. A. Time. But this property of speech is not how language itself is organized. Sentences consist of words: discrete units of meaning and linguistic form that we can combine

Strong winds move the palms of the palm trees at the first moment of the arrival of Hurricane Dorian in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, Sunday Sept. 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) More Practically parking itself over the Bahamas for a day and a half, Hurricane Dorian pounded away at the islands Tuesday in a catastrophic

An eerily calm photo taken Sunday shows the eye of Hurricane Dorian, one of the most powerful storms ever seen in the Atlantic. US Air Force pilots known as hurricane hunters are flying regular reconnaissance missions into Dorian, which strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane early Sunday as it tore through the northern Bahamas.

The asteroid 6478 Gault first drew attention to itself for sprouting a rare double trail of dust behind it, but now it’s treated astronomers to another surprise: a colour change. Asteroids have never before been caught in the act of shifting colours like this while under real-time observation. In the case of 6478 Gault,

China’s iPhone users have found a new craze – a new app called Zao which lets people convincingly and hilariously transpose their faces onto actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Kit Harrington from Game of Thrones, and many others. Zao topped the Chinese iOS download chart over the weekend after first launching on the App Store on

India’s first moon lander – Vikram – on Tuesday got nearer to the Moon with the Indian space agency successfully completing the first of the two de-orbital operations. According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the de-orbital operation began at 8:50am as planned. Using the onboard propulsion system for 4 seconds the operation was carried out

WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency said Sept. 2 it maneuvered one of its Earth science satellites to avoid a potential collision with a SpaceX Starlink satellite, the first time the agency said it’s had to maneuver to avoid a satellite associated with a broadband megaconstellation. In a series of tweets from its ESA Operations

Women gave more than half of TED talks in the first half of 2017, up from less than one-third in 2006, according to a new study published in Political Research Exchange. But the German research team also found that ethnic minorities remain under-represented as TED speakers, giving just one in five talks over the

A new Columbia Engineering study indicates that the world will experience more frequent and more extreme drought and aridity than currently experienced in the coming century, exacerbated by both climate change and land-atmosphere processes. The researchers demonstrate that concurrent soil drought and atmospheric aridity are largely driven by a series of land-atmosphere processes and feedback

Aeolus was launched on August 22, 2018. ESA/ATG medialab The European Space Agency (ESA) says one of its satellites was forced to avoid a satellite from SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, raising concerns about the impact of Starlink on low Earth orbit operations, after SpaceX refused to move their satellite out of the way. At 11.02

A residence in a mobile home park in Jensen Beach, Florida, was boarded up on September 2, 2019; the area is under a mandatory evacuation order as Hurricane Dorian slowly approaches More Michael James was boarding over the last two windows of his house on Florida’s east coast. The first gusty blasts of wind were

The Dyeing Poison Frog (Dendrobates tinctorius) of French Guiana has yellow stripes to keep predators away, but some have white stripes instead. Credit: University of Jyvaskyla More Diversity is a hallmark of life and it shows up in unexpected places. A multi-national team of evolutionary biologists investigated how two types of poison frog co-exist when

Credit: CC0 Public Domain More The ability to detect the direction of someone’s gaze is not unique to humans, as had been previously thought, according to new research. The contrasting color patterns of our eyes, which help us see where others are looking, was thought to be unique in humans but has been found

Professor Dustin Schroeder (foreground) and art historian Jessica Daniel splice 50-year-old film containing radar measurements of Antarctica into a reel in preparation for digital scanning at the Scott Polar Research Institute in the UK. Credit: Dustin Schroeder More Newly digitized vintage film has doubled how far back scientists can peer into the history of underground

Strong winds from Hurricane Dorian blow the tops of trees and brush while whisking up water from the surface of a canal that leads to the sea, located behind the brush at top, seen from the balcony of a hotel in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, Monday, Sept. 2, 2019. Hurricane Dorian hovered over the Bahamas